[WashingtonPost] Voter-ID law is reinstated for election
A federal appeals court on Tuesday reinstated Texas's voter-identification law for the November election, which the Justice Department had condemned as the state's latest means of suppressing minority voter turnout.
The ruling by the New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit temporarily blocks last week's ruling by U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos in Corpus Christi, who said the law was unconstitutional and similar to a poll tax designed to dissuade minorities from voting.
The 5th Circuit did not rule on the merits of the law; instead, it determined it was too late to change the rules for the upcoming election. Early voting starts Oct. 20.
The law remains under appeal. For now, the ruling is a key victory for Republican-backed photo-ID measures that have swept across the United States in recent years. The Texas law, considered the toughest of its kind in the nation, requires an estimated 13.6 million registered voters to have one of seven kinds of photo identification to cast a ballot. |